Guatemalan tapped to lead Westside CAN Center

By Jesus Lopez-Gomez

When Westside Community Action Network (CAN) Center director Lynda Callon stepped down suddenly in the fall of 2014 — a move prompted by an unusually aggressive cancer that she died from in October — she left some big shoes to fill.

In Callon’s two decades as director, she worked to build the organization’s flagship operations: providing a shelter, shower and coffee for the mainly Latino day laborers that would otherwise be waiting under the Interstate Highway 35 overpass above Southwest Boulevard, and providing broad catalogue of social services that run the gamut from neighborhood beautification to pro bono building code consulting. Callon reportedly handled the duties with facility and grace, endearing herself to the day workers who crafted a makeshift memorial for her at the center. Pictures of her sit alongside the accolades her service garnered.

The Guatemalan native has been at his current post for a little more than a month. A disaster relief coordinator by training, Coromac said managing the Westside community center’s operations matches the fundamentals he practiced as an aid coordinator: identify existing resources and make them work in an existing plan.

But that doesn’t begin to describe the amount of creative engineering Coromac has had to do. In 1999, his work with Children International sent him to El Salvador and Guatemala to help communities recover from Hurricane Mitch – something that left them “almost totally destroyed,” he said.

Coromac’s training enabled him to identify his remaining resources. For example, he recalled leading a team through towns that had been almost completely leveled by using paper maps to identify the most likely places to find survivors in the wreckage. In another case, he used a schoolhouse that had miraculously been left standing and repurposed it into a waste storage facility, protecting the survivors’ health and sanitation.

Coromac’s experience made him distinctive in a role that called for a special class of person, former interim director Barb Bailey said. And “not just anyone can sit in this chair and do this work,” Bailey stated.

Callon and Coromac had collaborated on the Westside CAN Center’s work for about 10 years.

“He really shared the vision and mission,” Bailey said.

Bailey described the new director an “Energizer bunny” with a talent for assembling and coordinating resources to deliver solutions with inadequate tools.